The one and ONLY problem the Hardtechno scene (or call it Schranz if you want, but Schranz is the Liebing style, not us) has at the moment, is that basically everyone and their uncle is starting their own label and pressing stuff that got turned down from more established labels in the first place.

Basically of all the German kids who send me demo cds and whom I tell "it ain´t good enough yet", one third starts their own label and releases this shit.

Furtheron, since none of these kids have money (neither did I when I started), no one can afford a decent cut. So there´s tons of low budget stuff coming out of cheap pressing plants in Germany, Czech Rep, etc on labels with no idea of promotion, distribution or even a concept. Some of these labels are just kids wanting to make money, cuz they know in th eonline stores, on a 24kb/s real media stream, most costomers cannot tell the quality difference between their stuff and for example a wittekind, arkus p, amok or seema record.

Most distributors can not tell a good hardtechno track from a bad one, so at the moment, they are taking every stupid new label there is.

I will agree that this is damaging the movement and that it´s hurting the scene.

I will agree that as of late, there has not been the amount of quality tunes in this sector as last year.

BUT

the reason for this is not Hardtechno having no where to go. Wittekind, Seema and myself for example have taken a break from producing to experiment a bit and find a way to go with this sound. A small taste of things to come can be heard on the new Artillery releases. After an admittably stale summer, I have seen the faces of the crowds when I first played these new releases at partys and I could read it off their eyes, that they were overjoyed to finally hear creative new stuff again.

Hardtechno is far from dead! It is evolving into something new. What? That remains to be seen (or heard).



On a side note: Hardtechno can not exist by itself. A night full of 150+bpm madness will bore the crowd. But so will a night of 140bpm looptechno every weekend or techhouse / clickhouse for that matter. Techno has always been diverse, that was what made it big. Nowadays people make a fuss about 5bpm difference and call it a new style and try to split it from the rest. But all that dividing will succeed in doing, is makin the cake smaller for everyone. I say throw all you got in the mix (techno, schranz, hardtechno, hardcore, acid, u name it) and lets bake a bigger cake for everyone.